Research

The Wiskur group works in the areas of enantioselective synthesis and the investigation of reaction mechanism.All of their studies are focused on ways to rapidly prepare highly enantioenriched compounds.One way they are doing this is through kinetic resolutions.A kinetic resolution is the separation of enantiomers by taking a racemic mixture and performing a reaction on one of the enantiomers, while leaving the other enantiomer alone.The Wiskur group is working on separating a variety of different functional groups that have not been traditionally targeted by kinetic resolutions such as thiols, alpha hydroxy carbonyl compounds, and amines while also investigating novel approaches to perform this procedure.

The Wiskur group is also quite interested in how reactions take place from how a chiral catalyst transfers chirality to the substrate to which reagents are involved and the role they play.A variety of techniques are employed to help elucidate this mechanistic information, including classical kinetics to determine reaction order, linear free energy studies to examine electronic and steric affects, ReactIR studies to “watch” the reaction in real time, and circular dichroism to investigate chiral complexes.